Friday June 13 through THursday June 19, 2008

Friday, June 13, 2008
Tentacles - 1977 Italy

Man, how can such a crappy movie have such an outstanding cast. John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, Henry Fonda, Claude Akins. Impressive. Of course, that's all the Americans associated with the film. The rest of the names all end in "o", if you know what I mean. The director, Oliver Hellman, is actually Ovidio G. Assonitis, who gave us Piranha II, Forever Emmanuelle, and several American Ninjas. IMDB says that the budget was $750K. Obviously, that was entirely spent on the American actors' salaries, and everyone else worked for free.

It's like they spliced two movies together. A cheapie Italian ocean pic and an American B-movie. I'd swear they even used two film stocks.

Then, just when you're ready to give up on this movie a true piece of junk, 56 minutes in, there is an awesome, (but pointless) tracking craneshot. Amazingly well done. A work of art. Yet it contributes nothing to the movie. It *IS* a thing of beauty, though.

Then, 15 minutes later, all respect is dashed as there is the cheapest pulltoy octopus the planet has ever seen. Seriously, it's a rubber octopus being drug behind a boat. Pathetic.

And in the end, the only characters in the movie who do anything are the Killer Whales, who somehow manage to escape unscathed by the "terrible suckers". The terrible suckers were the folks who sank $750K into this turkey.

Saturday, June 14, 2008
The Machine Girl - 2008

IMDB says that this was a USA/Japan co-production. I'm thinking that the only thing Americans had to do with this was put up the money. It's *SO* Japanese in flavor. Blood and gore galore. It's a pity people aren't really this tough. I mean, wouldn't it be great if you could have your arm torn off, and then be able to walk a couple miles to your house, and still live? Or survive multiple point blank gunshot wounds to the chest?

There are some clever homages to classic Kung-Fu movies here as well. This was a lot of fun, if you don't mind the buckets of blood. Alas, the only extra is a Behind the Scenes that really wasn't.

Sunday, June 15 - Monday, June 16, 2008
Andromeda Strain - 2008

A&E remakes a classic movie and book into a very nice mini-series. And it has Daniel Dae Kim, who was in Crusade. Although they modernized it (and it needed that, if you see the old movie, it's sad how what was once thought to look high-tech now is just plain laughable), they really didn't do violence to the book. The parts that the book actually talk about are pretty true. It's just that the book doesn't explain where Andromeda comes from, so they make up an interesting story for that. I can live with that. It's certainly truer to the source material than Jumper, for instance.

The entire thing is subtitled (yeah!!!) and has a commentary. Part one's commentary has director Mikael Salomon, Editor Scott Vickrey, Executive Producer David W. Zucker , and Prod. Tom Thayer. Like everything else today, it's shot in G.D. Vancouver. (I wonder how much longer before the Unions realize just how much business they have driven away). Some good tech info in this commentary. Nice that it's all shot digitally. And there's a real interesting section on money-raising that they don't normally talk about.

The commentary for the second part shows how much conflict there was between producers, it even coming out in the commentary discussions themselves. More money talk, explaining how their budget shrank due to the dollar shrinking against the Canadian dollar.

Other extras include a surprisingly good Making of, and a Special Effects breakdown.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Stump The Band - 2006

You know a movie was made on the cheap with the characters start drinking "Old Style" beer. Yikes. I think that's a step below Pabst! And no one should be surprised that I hate everyone in this movie. Except the dykes. They're okay.

There's some gore, and it's really trying hard, but it's just missing something. It's not extreme or funny enough to be great.

Commentary by Producer/Composer Robbie Rist, director/producer William Holmes, and writer/editor/and co-director JoJo Henrickson. Interestingly enough, it was made for only $100K, but was a SAG movie. I am quite amazed at that. There's a lot of background, some Indy info, but not much technical. It's also kinda funny, so worth a listen.

Other extras include A Behind the Scenes that actually better than most, with lots of details. There are some deleted scenes that were not bad, but easily loseable. And some outtakes. Not too bad an effort, overall.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Drive-In Double Feature
Society - 1989

Directed by Brian Yuzna of Re-Animator fame, this movie is kind of a 90210 Meets From Beyond. But it struck me as odd that supposed High School students were so openly drinking, even in the 80's and in California. I guess I had time to be bothered by that because it's so slow. It kinda drags until the big payoff in the last 20 minutes.

Commentary by Brian alone, and it's pretty dull. All background, no tech and no decent antidotes.

Spontaneous Combustion - 1990

This movie has some good players in it. There's Brad Dourif who I really like, and John Landis has a little part and is toasted, Dick Butkus has a little part, and it's written and directed by the initially brilliant Tobe Hooper . This movie is more like Poltergist than Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This movie is not too bad. But you can definitely see that this is well into the decline of Tobe, which is too bad.

Thursday, June 19, 2008
MST3K - The Movie - 1996

Wow, look at how good the sets are in this thing! Man, if only the series could have been like this, it might have lasted longer. It's also amazing how much you can trash a movie that really isn't that bad. I mean, This Island Earth is a classic, if not as great as Earth vs The Flying Saucers or The Day The Earth Stood Still. Still, Mike and the bots get plenty of good zingers in, even though the movie isn't a stinker like Manos or Touch of Satan.